Data associated with an object can be stored in a content management system along with links to associated objects and metadata associated with the object. For example, an email is stored in the system along with links to attachments, routing data, appended comments, etc. There may be multiple types of objects. Searching of objects depends in some systems on the type of the object—for example, a full text index may be available to search email message body content but not attachments and/or appended comments, which may be searchable only using metadata stored in a relational database. In addition, content stored in a content management system may include complex objects that include multiple objects of different types and the relations between each of the multiple objects. Since each type of object has different searching requirements that are matched to the type, searching of a complex object is not easily performed. It would be useful to be able to easily search across multiple types of objects and to be able to search across objects of different types within a complex object.